Round 7: Farid Meraghni vs. Florent Jeudon

Mark Wraith

Welcome to the standard portion of this years competition. This round sees Farid Meraghni, winner of Pro Tour San Diego, take on Florent Jeudon of the famous Black Ops team. They both made it through the draft portion at 5-1, quite a respectable record. Farid has been testing draft heavily on Magic Online. In fact, if you've played a draft in the last few months, the chances are Farid was in it. With more accounts than most small countries, he's famous for running multiple drafts at the same time.

Game 2

Sideboarding was fairly easy for both players – Florent's Slide deck can take out superfluous creatures such as Teroh's Faithful and one Exalted Angel for Ray of Revelation, and Farid took out his Smothers for Rays, since they can only target face-down Angels. He also took out all of his Cabal Therapies for Envelop, which is probably not correct – you want to leave one in against everyone and probably more versus Slide.

Meraghni played a Static Orb but it wasn't particularly frightening for Jeudon without an Opposition in play and Florent had plenty of time to find his Plains and unmorph Exalted Angel, for which Opposition was the only answer in Farid's deck. Meraghni made a Phantom Centaur, but as he had already taken a few points of pain from his lands, and Florent was gaining four lives a turn, it wasn't even a race.

Farid Meraghni 1 – Florent Jeudon 1

After sideboarding this matchup swings a lot. Without Ray of Revelation, Florent's deck can virtually scoop to Opposition, but with it he can buy a lot of time to find Exalted Angel. Meraghni doesn't really have much chance of putting enough pressure on without his enchantments. On the other hand, Farid's Ray of Revelations are more of an annoyance than a real problem for Florent.